Second Star To The Right, And Straight On Till Morning
by iworkwithpens
Summary: Sloan was wrong. Mackenzie was not his Goldilocks planet...she was so much more. Post episode 2 x 06 fic.


**Author's Notes: This is my version of what happened after episode 2 x 06. It's wishful thinking, I'm sure, but hey…wishful thinking never killed anyone. Many thanks to teanc09 for the title idea. **

_Where is Neverland?  
Second star to the right, and straight on till morning  
~Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie_

A Goldilocks planet. It's a good analogy, not too hot and not too cold, but perfectly suited for life. And so he doesn't argue with Sloan, but only because he doesn't have the heart to tell her she is totally, fucking wrong. Goldilocks implies that Mackenzie is completely and utterly middle-of-the-road. Not too hard, not too soft. Not too much, not too little. Mackenzie is so much more than betwixt and between. So much more than the centermost point. So much more than _average_.

Mackenzie is not the perfect surrogate planet, destined to be a substitute for his dying Earth. She is the light that shines on his ailing ecosystem, and really, what the fuck is going through his head lately that he has time to come up with analogies like this?! But he does, and he has, so he lets his mind continue down its wandering path.

He realizes now that he had tried to use Nina Howard as some sort of replacement…an alternative light source. But as any good gardener will tell you, plants know the difference between a sun lamp and the real thing. Nina Howard wasn't the real thing, and he is now withering on the vine.

"Can I come up?" he shouts into the intercom of her building, and he can practically see her rolling her eyes and smacking her hand against her forehead in frustration.

"What do you want Will?" she asks, and he's never before realized that snappy retorts lose something in the translation through electronic equipment. Because he knows she means it to sound frustrated and angry, but it just comes out through the speaker on the brick wall as a weary, tinny warble. _What more do you want from me?_ Truth is, he doesn't really know.

"I just…I need to talk to you for a minute" he shouts, hoping she will realize he is standing outside on a very busy street in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, and despite the late hour, people are starting to recognize him. He really doesn't want to end up on Page Six in the morning.

"We can talk at work Will. I'll be there at 8am. I'm easy to find. I'm the one with the coffee, and the highlighters, and the newspapers, and a frustrated economist standing outside the door whining about the extra two minutes she'll need that night. Come to think of it, you sound a lot like Sloan right now. Why are you whining Will?" She is getting a kick out of this now. He knows she is.

"I'm not fucking whining Mackenzie! Now, would you please let me up before someone takes a video of me out here shouting at a brick wall?!" Mercifully, he hears the building's steel door click open, and he pushes through it before she can change her mind, running up the stairs with a speed that surprises even him.

"I don't know Will. I think your tone has a certain petulant two-year-old pleading to it. Care to join me for a drink?" she asks, with a cocked eyebrow and an impatiently tapping foot, as he skids to a halt in front of her open front door. He nods and follows. It's always best to just nod and follow Mackenzie when you know you're wrong. Because Mackenzie sits up taller and straighter on the moral high ground than anyone he's ever met. It's as if she's beating the sycophants and slick, snake oil salesmen away with a stick. Sadly, he joined their ranks, this morning, when he sank to wearing a helmet and tossing footballs on national television. What would Edward R. Murrow have done? The question rings in his ears. Followed closely by what would Mackenzie McHale have done?

He follows her silent footfalls across the wood floor of her apartment. He hasn't been here before and he's momentarily struck dumb by the light that radiates into her living room.

"Jesus Mac! All you can see out your window is Times Square! It must be terrifying when Brian Williams does the nightly news. To see a head that size stretched out across the jumbotron could give a guy nightmares" Will remarks.

"I put up with _your_ big head, why the hell wouldn't I be able to stomach Brian Williams' head?" she asks, pulling glasses off an overhead shelf and filling them with scotch. The good stuff. A woman after his own heart.

"Here" she says, pushing the glass into his hand. "Why are you here Will?"

She retreats to the sofa and pulls a blanket up over her pajama clad form, and he realizes how much smaller she is without the heels, and the metaphorical body armor of silk shirts, and pencil skirts, and killer heels. She radiates power and strength all day long and somehow seems to sink in at night.

"I don't have anywhere else to go?" he squeaks out, but they both know it's not true. He has a seven million dollar penthouse, and an office, and even a friend or two he could visit. But he wants to be here. Because _she_ is here.

"Did Lady Macbeth kick you out of your own castle? You really have to watch out for that one Will. Before you know it she'll be plotting to overthrow the king and wandering the halls at night mumbling 'out damn spot.' Ambition is a dangerous quality Billy. Particularly when one has no talent to back it up. Think about that next time Nina schemes a plan for your future."

She means it bitterly, and probably intends to hurt him with it, but it is true, and her assessment is right on point.

"Yeah, sorry about that. Won't happen again" he assures her. They sip their drinks and stare out at Times Square and he realizes she doesn't actually have any lights on in her apartment. She doesn't need to. There's an eerie, unearthly glow to the room that comes entirely from the ambient light of the city that never sleeps.

"You can't guarantee that Will. You can't promise me that she won't try to overstep her bounds. I'm just asking you to leave her comments and concerns in the bedroom. _I'm_ your E.P. If you want Nina Howard to be your E.P., then fire me, and hire her. Whatever else you may think of me, I know what I'm doing, and I don't appreciate Gossip Girlfriend trying to act like she has a fucking clue what an executive producer does. She's a glorified high-school cheerleader run amuck. A professional 'mean girl.' And I refuse to let 'chatty cathy' decide what my anchor will or will not do."

She sits back and sighs. As if that speech has taken the last of her energy.

"No, I really mean _it won't happen again_ Mac" he stresses the words for her. "I broke up with her. If you can call what we had an actual relationship, that is. It was mostly sex. An unloving, monogamous fling, if you will. A relationship with strings, but no heart, attached. A pairing of convenience and not of meaning, a…." he starts, but is quickly cut off.

"I get it Will. I get it. Please don't go into further detail. Spare me images that may haunt me for years to come."

"Mac?" he asks, still staring at the almost garish display outside her picture window.

"Yeah?" she whispers softly, fatigue coloring her tone.

"How the hell can you stand all this light?!" he nearly shouts. It is like his brain is on overload. He is used to New York City. He loves it. But this is an assault on the senses. Floor to ceiling windows that make you feel like the Toshiba sign is about the burst right through the glass and into the living room. He enjoys his little glass cube high above the roar of it all. Sure, if you sit out on his balcony, you can hear the traffic. But it is more of a vague humming noise. It's almost calming. This is an in your face reminder that the city is just outside your door.

"I like the light. Reminds me where I am" she admits, and he knows what she's not saying. That two years of dark, desert nights leave you longing for the sound of traffic, and not gunfire. Longing for LED displays, and not the glare of a missile, as it shoots through the night sky.

"Does it help?" he wonders, and doesn't even notice that his fingers are inching their way closer to her, across the space of the sofa cushions between them.

"Sometimes. Sometimes I call Jim and listen to him rattle off his list of the things that remind him we're home. Gray's Papaya hot dogs seem to figure prominently." They both laugh at that. He's liked Jim almost from the beginning. He has guts. He sticks to his guns. And, perhaps most importantly, he had been with Mac when she was stabbed and they both made it back to tell the tale. And now, to know that Jim soothes Mackenzie to sleep at night…well, he owes the kid. But part of him dislikes the fact that it is Jim that Mackenzie calls, late at night, when she can't sleep.

"What reminds _you_ that you're home?" he asks, as the tips of his fingers meet hers.

"Starbucks, a firm mattress, a hot shower every morning, stockings and high heels every day, and your voice on my mobile at two in the morning" she says, twining her fingers with his.

"I've missed quite a few midnight calls lately, haven't I?" he asks, and he hopes she knows how much he longs for them. There were even a few nights that he had crept out of his own bed, slunk out to his balcony, and called Mackenzie while Nina slept on, unaware. He'd felt like he was cheating. On Nina, on Mac, on his own heart.

"Yup. I've gotten more sleep lately. Do I look rested?" she asks facetiously, because Mac _never_ looks rested.

"No, do I?" he counters. And he knows he doesn't. Because Nina talks in her sleep, and it's not even interesting, it's nonsensical ramblings about the glitteratzi of New York. And it's like being forced to watch Entertainment Tonight in his own bed. At least when Mackenzie mumbled in her sleep it was interesting. It usually involved whispered curses against the Republican Party in general, and George Bush and Ronald Reagan, in particular. Mackenzie, at least, entertained him when she talked in her sleep.

"You look like shit Will. I'm sorry you and Nina didn't work out" she says sincerely, and that is the tragic elegance of Mackenzie McHale. Gracious, even in defeat.

"I'm not. I really don't have a clue what the fuck I was thinking" he admits, and it's true. Some nights, he had found himself curled up with a five-foot-four blonde on his couch and wishing for a five-foot-eight brunette. He'd nearly called her Mac a few times, and how the fuck would he have explained that?!

"You were thinking that you didn't want to be alone. I get it" she whispers, and the fingers that had loosely twined themselves with his suddenly grasped with a strength he had forgotten she had. Mackenzie McHale was, _is_, deceptively strong. The pale skin, the clipped wispy accent, and the birdlike fingers and wrist bones could be deceiving. Beneath all that was a warrior. God help the man (or woman) who tried to fuck with her.

"Being lonely _with_ someone is almost worse than being lonely by yourself Mac" he admits, and they both know it's true. She had tried with Wade, and he had tried with Nina, and it only made you feel worse in the end. But for the first time in weeks, he doesn't feel so alone. Sitting on that couch, in Midtown Manhattan, squinting into the glare of Times Square outside the window, he feels a lot more connected than he has in weeks.

"I had a drink with Don earlier" she tells him, and he finds himself waiting for what comes next.

"Uh huh?" he murmurs, hoping to spur her on.

"He said I should go out more."

They sit there in silence for a few moments and he's not sure what he's supposed to say to that. Should he encourage her, even though every fiber of his being wants to shout 'NO!' Or should he wait for a cue from her?

"He told me I'll find someone" she says flatly.

"You will" he manages to push past his lips, though it feels unnatural and forced. Of course you'll find someone Mac. You're gorgeous and sexy and brilliant and funny and…_you_. Of course you'll find someone.

"I'm sure I would. I'm sure I _could_" she says, as if echoing his thoughts, and his heart sinks in his chest. "But that's exactly the problem Will. I will find _someone_ , not _the one_, because I already found him. But he's been dating Hedda Hopper, and what the fuck am I supposed to do with _that_?" she spits out.

Why does it please him so that Mackenzie has just referenced a 1950's Hollywood gossip columnist? But he knows the answer already. He and Mac have always understood absolutely _everything_ the other said. He could finish her indecipherable mixed metaphors and she could read his mind. They used to sit at the kitchen table together in complete silence, passing portions of the newspaper back and forth to each other without so much as a word. Sharing a cup of coffee, because they took it exactly the same, and pointing quietly to a story of interest that could not be missed. He'd been longing for the kind of effortless symbiosis he had with Mackenzie, but that was the kind of shit you just couldn't replicate with another. You either have it or you don't.

"I'm going to bed Will. Let yourself out or sleep on the couch. Whichever you prefer" she tells him with a sigh, and he realizes he has been sitting there silently, lost in his memories, and hasn't responded to what she said.

"I'm not dating Hedda Hopper anymore Mac. And you're not dating Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And what do we do with _that_?" he counters.

"We go to sleep Will." She walks out of the room and he continues to sit and stare at the light display outside her window. Can she really sleep with all that _energy_ radiating into her home? He tiptoes toward her bedroom and notices that she has drawn a light cotton curtain across the window, but it still allows a gauzy glow to fill the room. It's almost comforting, in an odd way, he supposes.

"Mac?" he whispers.

"What Will?" She is quiet, and turned away from him, but he can feel the tension that wracks her small frame. He hates that he is the cause of so much of it.

"Can I sleep in here?" he begs, because he's fifty-three for God's sake, and a sofa from Ikea just isn't going to cut it for his back anymore.

"Stay on your side of the bed" she wearily replies, and scoots over a little more to give him room.

After several minutes of painful silence, he wonders if she's still awake, and so he lightly pokes her shoulder.

"What?!" she whispers angrily.

"You can't see the stars from here with all that fucking light" he tells her, and she exhales forcefully.

"You can't see the stars _anywhere_ in New York City, Will! It's not something I really worry about."

"You can almost see them from my apartment" he challenges.

"Well, not all of us can afford to live thirty floors above the rest of the city. Go to sleep Will" she huffs.

"Have you ever heard of light pollution Mac?" he asks, though he feels like he might be risking life and limb by keeping her awake much longer.

"You really want to discuss fucking _light pollution_ at midnight Will?" because she has always known a line of bullshit from him when she hears one. She's urging him to get to the point, but he's not ready yet. He's not there.

"Astronomers fear that soon we won't even be able to study the cosmos from Earth anymore. There's so much excess energy, heat, and light being produced by large cities and overpopulated areas that telescopes have trouble seeing past our atmosphere. "

"Great, we'll do a story on it. Now, can I _please_ go to sleep Will?" she begs. Wait for it Mac…I'm getting there.

"I can understand why you find the light comforting Mackenzie. I find it excessive, but you find it a symbol of home, and so it's welcoming. Have you ever heard of obtrusive light Mac?" he asks, and he knows he is pushing his luck. She's using her last reserves of patience and energy to put up with him tonight.

"I've heard of obtrusive ex-boyfriends. I'm sleeping with one right now" she snaps back.

"Obtrusive light is unwanted trespass of light into your private environment. I read a court case once, about these neighbors who were battling over whether one could string up thousands of Christmas lights every year, even though they practically lit up his neighbor's home all night long. That's obtrusive light Mac. What is beautiful and festive to one man, is blinding and offensive to another."

"Get to the fucking point Will, because while you may find the sound of your own voice beautiful and festive, I am currently finding it annoying and odious." Maybe she'd lost her nearly endless endurance for his nighttime ramblings. He could go on for hours when he couldn't sleep.

"You came back and you were this burst of light that was blinding Mac, and I wasn't ready, and I'm sorry. But I think maybe I _am_ ready now, if you'll have me, because I really love the way you glow Kenz" he whispers. He lets out a deep breath, one he may have been holding in for five years, when she starts to laugh. Laugh with a carefree abandon that he's missed…so much.

"Are you really comparing me to fucking Christmas lights Billy?" she asks, looking at him over her shoulder.

"Hey, it's late, and I'm tired and the theory of light pollution and Christmas decorations was the best I could do. Sue me" he chuckles into her ear. "It could have been worse, Sloan gave me this whole lecture on Goldilocks, and how you're the only planet in the galaxy for me, and I'm not sure, but there may have been an insult in there about your perfect gaseous state. You might want to have words with Sloan later."

"Can we go to sleep now Will? If I'm going to survive being your Goldilocks, or your perfect planet, or your Christmas lights, I really need to get some fucking sleep."

"Yeah. Thanks for letting me stay" he whispers, and hopes he isn't taking his life in his hands by pulling her close and curling up around her. Mercifully, she lets him live.

He must look giddily happy the next morning, because he's barely in his office for ten minutes before Sloan is pushing through his door, and high-fiving him, and clapping him on the back for finally taking her advice.

"Sloan!" comes a shout from Mackenzie's office.

"What did I do?" Sloan asks suspiciously, looking to Will for guidance. He simply shrugs as Mackenzie storms into the room.

"Which is it? Ridiculously stupid, kleptomaniac fairy tale character, or a planet filled with hot air? Please tell me which of these things you think mostly closely describes my personality traits?!" Mackenzie asks accusingly, arms crossed and high-heeled toe tapping, as she waits for an answer.

"Um…neither?" Sloan mumbles apologetically.

"Forget about the extra two minutes tonight Sloan" Mackenzie replies, and stomps from the room, shooting a wink towards Will on her way out.

"Do you tell her _everything_?!" Sloan complains.

"She has ways of getting information out of me. I can't help it" Will shrugs.

"Please, don't elaborate on the ways Kenz extracts information from you" Sloan grimaces. "Oh, and Will?" she throws back over her shoulder.

"Yeah?" he asks nervously.

"I'm happy for you, big brother."


End file.
